Crafting

For years you have been able to create weapons with your bare hands, using raw steel, in real life. What if we were to tell you there’s now a way to SIMULATE that in-game? Because we just did!

— Crafting publicity blurb

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Crafting is an in-game system that allows players to create any specific items for use in Team Fortress 2. Crafting was introduced with the WAR! Update in the December 17, 2009 Patch. Items that can be created include weapons, cosmetics, and materials that can be used in further craftings, such as Scrap Metal or Class Tokens. Crafting is usually conducted by utilizing unwanted or duplicate items gained through the item drop system. In order to create items, the player must follow the blueprints, all of which are initially available to players with a "Premium" Team Fortress 2 account. After following a valid blueprint recipe, the player will gain the item specified by the blueprint. Non-Premium users cannot craft Rare or Special items[1], and tools cannot be crafted under any circumstances.

Crafting weapon classifications

In contrast with the weapon slots presented in-game, the crafting system classifies some weapons in different slots. For example, the Spy's Revolver is classified as a secondary weapon despite how in-game, it is equipped in the first item slot. Below is a list of all the usable weapons and slots that the crafting system uses. Note that the table does not include the Stock weapons for the classes, such as the Scattergun, as these are not usable in crafting. However, if one has a stock weapon that has been renamed or described, it can be used to craft into scrap.

Item numbering

Brain Bucket #1

Level 1 HatZombie tested, braaaains approved.

Crafting numbers are a cosmetic value attached to any crafted weapon or cosmetic item introduced during the May 5, 2011 Patch, as well as most items added in any later update. This number represents the order that a given item was crafted in; for example, a "Brain Bucket #1" would be the very first Brain Bucket to have ever been crafted. While the craft number goes into the thousands on third-party backpack viewers, #100 is the maximum value displayed in-game. For example, a "Brain Bucket #101" would only appear in-game as "Brain Bucket".

Golden Wrench

From July 5 to July 9, 2010, players crafting any items in-game had a chance of finding an extremely rare item, the Golden Wrench, of which only 100 were made available. Valve used a list of specified times to help smooth the frequency with which Golden Wrenches were found. When a player crafted an item after one of the times specified, a random drop could occur giving the player their crafted item and a Golden Wrench. When a Golden Wrench was found, it would be announced to all online Team Fortress 2 servers at once in the form of a dialog box in the center of the screen and an accompanying sound bite. This was only available before and leading up to the Engineer Update until all 100 wrenches were found. An announcement was also shown when one of these Golden Wrenches was destroyed.

Smelt, Reclaimed, and Refined Metal blueprints were temporarily disabled due to this event until all of the 100 Golden Wrenches had been acquired in order to stop people from endlessly smelting and re-crafting their Metal until they got one. These blueprints were disabled up until the Mann-Conomy Update, even though the Engineer Update had completed and no more Golden Wrenches could be found.

Jag changed from 2 Scrap Metal and a Southern Hospitality to 1 Scrap Metal and a Southern Hospitality.

Loch-n-Load changed from 2 Reclaimed Metal and a Scottish Resistance to 1 Reclaimed Metal and a Scottish Resistance.

Sharpened Volcano Fragment changed from 1 refined, a Degreaser and a Powerjack to 2 Reclaimed Metal and an Axtinguisher.

Sun-on-a-Stick changed from 1 refined and a Boston Basher to 2 Reclaimed Metal and a Boston Basher.

Ullapool Caber changed from 2 Reclaimed Metal and a Sandman to 2 Scrap Metal and a Pain Train.

Vita-Saw changed from 1 Reclaimed Metal and an Ubersaw to 2 Scrap Metal and an Ubersaw.

Warrior's Spirit changed from 2 Reclaimed Metal and a Gloves of Running Urgently to 1 Scrap Metal and a Gloves of Running Urgently.

Items previously crafted using recipes that will be reduced in this update have been upgraded to Vintage quality - These included the Australian Christmas sets, the Sharpened Volcano Fragment and the Sun-on-a-Stick, and the Shogun Pack Weapons.

[Undocumented] The cosmetic items from the Strongbox Pack were made craftable.

Other undocumented changes:

When miscellaneous items were first separated from Hats, due to players wanting to equip the Camera Beard and other Spy hats simultaneously, the Camera Beard began dropping at the same rate as weapons. It was not unusual for players to find many in the course of a week. Despite the Camera Beard being considered as a 'headgear', two could not be combined to get another hat but could be crafted together to create another Miscellaneous piece of headgear. After the Camera Beard drop-rate was patched in a subsequent update, it became possible to craft two of them together to make a hat.

Grenade, Building, Head, and PDA(1) Slot Tokens were once listed in the items_game.txt file and were valid items, but none of them were given blueprints, and as such these items were removed from the game during the Mann-Conomy Update. It was previously possible to craft a Head Slot Token by placing 4 hats in the crafting window due to an oversight, but the blueprint and all instances of the item were finally removed when the Mann-Conomy update was launched.

Notes

As of the May 5, 2011 Patch any hat or weapon crafted will display "Crafted by PLAYERNAME" in the description of the item. Additionally, using the Restore button in the backpack will give an option to remove this feature from the item.

Smelting refined or reclaimed metal only partially made from untradable reclaimed or scrap metal will cause all metal produced to be untradable.

Bugs

Some cases have been reported of players "finding" Scrap Metal. This is most often caused by player losing connection to Steam after clicking the craft button. This means the items are used in the craft recipe, yet the result of the craft remains uncollected until the player dies in a server: giving the "PLAYERNAME has found: METALTYPE" alert.

Untradable metal, and items made with untradable metal, were reverted to tradable due to a glitch until a subsequent patch was released. This behavior was observed during the Scream Fortress Update event with the Voodoo Jujus and Spine-Chilling Skulls crafted using untradable Haunted Metal Scrap. Halloween Hats crafted prior to the November 10, 2010 Patch became tradable after the update, but hats crafted after that have reportedly remained untradable suggesting Valve has fixed the glitch.

When viewing the entire backpack while selecting an item to craft, an empty slot is shown first followed by everything else in proper order, resulting in the rightmost column being displayed on the left side, the bottom-right item being displayed on the top-right of the next page, and the last item in the backpack being inaccessible.

Sometimes, when using a Strange weapon as a crafting ingredient, the result will show "No matching blueprint".

Demonstration

Notes and references

↑ abIf the player uses a Multiple Class weapon with a Class Token, or 3 Multiple Class weapon and chooses to create a Class Token, it will always result in the token of the first class that can equip the weapons those using in crafting (e.g. 3x Pain Train will result in Soldier Token or 3x Freedom Staff will result in Scout token).

↑ abWeapons only; Cosmetic items cannot be used to create a "Cosmetic Token".

↑The Batter's Helmet consumed with this blueprint will not retain its properties. This includes level, rarity, applied paint, customized name and customized description. The level will be randomized.